Batman and Robin #39 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Peter J. Tomasi
Art By: Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray, John Kalisz
Cover By: $2.99
Release Date: February 18, 2015

Going With Dad To The Office

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

When we last went to Wayne Manor and checked in on our Dynamic Duo, we saw that Bruce had his hands full with his recently resurrected son and his newly acquired superpowers.  That's right folks, Damian is all superhumaned up and is running Batman ragged as our Dark Knight tried to rope his son in and get him to go easy on all the brutality that's coming from Damian not knowing his own strength....... not that it ever stopped him before the powers.  Well the issue got weird after that and we then saw Damian swimming down to Atlantis and taking possession of all his clones that turned out wrong and then releasing them on what I hope was a uninhabited island.  Good issue overall, but man did it get weird.  Let's see if this issue continues the weird trend or if it goes back to the Batman and Robin basics............. you know, just with superpowers.

Explain It!:

The father son bonding portion of our story begins when Damian goes and takes it upon himself to send a message to a bunch of Gotham's big bads when he gathers them up and takes them up to the edge of space and tells them that if they cross the line and murder anyone, then they'll cross the line and they'll become astronauts....... It's a really cool moment but it all goes bad when for some reason Damian's powers fail him and he almost drops a bunch of villains to their death.  It's a good thing that Batman has a short leash on Damian at the moment and was there with the Bat Jet to catch Arkham's finest before word on the street became that Batman and Robin were dropping fools to their deaths.  After this little screw up is when we see the bonding section where Bruce and Damian go fishing.  Like the previous section of the book, this is really good too because neither one of them wants to be out on a boat but I guess Alfred put his foot down about father son time........ of course it doesn't last long and Damian flies Bruce and the boat back to the Manor......... much to Alfred's chagrin I might add.

Well, fishing doesn't work so it's back to the basics and our two heroes spending time with each other by taking out the bad guys of Gotham but when they're finished we get a very worrisome look at what's happening to Damian when it appears that the boy isn't capable of feeling anything anymore (hopefully just physically) but that's put on hold when the Justice League contacts Batman to the Watchtower........... which leads to Damian running an unsupervised muck around Gotham as he chases criminals with the Bat Signal itself........ which leads to the return of daddy and him being forced to take his son into the office.

In the end, Damian pretends to be unimpressed as he's shown the Watchtower for the first time and Shazam comes off as even more of a awful snot than he's previously appeared in the New 52, by continuously saying "ass" over and over and by really trying to get Damian's approval........ I know that he's still just a thirteen year old boy, but at this point he's had his powers for awhile and is a member of the Justice League and it just comes off that he's ashamed of his grown up Shazam persona and the wisdom of Solomon seems to be absent from his current power set......... Enough about how bad Shazam was in this issue, let's get back to how the Justice League has to go to a Japanese island to fight off a monster that is attacking passing ships and how Damian gets to tag along for the ride.  Yeah, it looks like the final issue of Batman and Robin is going to be a fun one next month.

That's it for this issue of Batman and Robin and while I love the way that Tomasi writes the members of the Wayne household, it's when other heroes get involved that I cringe because they almost always come off feeling wrong.  Now I loved the majority of this book, but when it came to the last part and Shazam, I wanted to smack both Damian and Billy Batson for being such insufferable little shits.  Damian is normally portrayed as thinking he's the smartest person in the room and Billy Batson since his New 52 re-imagining has come off as a snot........ which you get here but for whatever reason they both came off as their worst possible selves and it really made me dislike this entire section.  But with all my bitching aside, the rest of this book was really fun and the art is what you've come to expect from Patrick Gleason and man do I love it.  See you next issue as we check out Damian and his first mission with the Justice League.

Bits and Pieces:

While the majority of this book was spot on and fun, the ending really took me out of the book and made me wonder how Shazam ever became a member of the Justice League and why Bruce would allow Damian to ever associate with people in general.......... not that he really has a choice with his son's new powers but it really felt off to me and left a bad taste in my brain's mouth.  Stop looking at my brain's mouth.  Besides for that though, the book was really solid and reminded me why I missed Damian so much when he was gone.

7.5/10